Promoting psychological support services for parents of children with sarcoma through health-social partnership: A quality improvement project

Purpose: A significant portion of parents of children diagnosed with sarcoma experience excessive stress and anxiety disorder. This quality improvement project aimed to implement a psychological support service program tailored for parents of children with sarcoma and evaluate its effects. Design and methods: An interprofessional team was formed through a health-social partnership to deliver comprehensive psychological support service program involving multiple cognitive-behavioral components to parents of children with sarcoma. Parents who were identified as having excessive stress and/or anxiety disorder and voluntarily agreed to participate were enrolled. Pre- and post-intervention assessments were conducted, and previously recorded data from parents of children hospitalized in the year prior to this quality improvement project were included as historical controls. Results: A total of 48 parents, including 35 mothers and 13 fathers, participated in the quality improvement project. Results showed that participants achieved greater reduction in emotional, somatic, and behavioral stress when compared with historical controls (all p < .001). Significantly lower prevalence of moderate to severe anxiety disorder was also found (4.2% vs. 85.4%, p < .001). Conclusions: The implementation of a psychological support service program, informed by cognitive-behavioral theory and delivered through a health-social partnership, effectively alleviated multiple facets of stress and anxiety disorder in parents of children newly diagnosed with sarcoma. Practice implications: Nurses can facilitate and coordinate the collaboration among interprofessional team to deliver specialized psychological support services and ensure that parents of children with sarcoma have access to these services, ultimately enhancing their psychological well-being.